New Report Says Sony’s ‘Concord’ Cost $400 Million To Make

It seemed obvious that Sony was going to take a huge loss on Concord, given its high cost, immediately disastrous playercount and unprecedented shutdown. But it may be even worse than everyone thought.

A new report from Sacred Symbols’ Colin Moriarty, citing a source that worked on Concord, claims that the game had a higher budget than anyone envisioned, a full $400 million, broken up into two halves of development. You catch watch the video below, but I’ll have a summary beneath that:

What happened:

• Before the game hit alpha state, they’d already spent $200 million on it, unclear how much from original owners/investors and how much is from Sony.
• After that, from 2021 to the 2024 launch, Sony spent another $200 million on it. The game was in a “laughable shape” when it was shown in that alpha state, so Sony felt like they needed to spend that much to get it to minimal viable product status.
• A major expense was needing to outsource much of the game to other studios. In Q1 2023, some aspects of the game had not been worked on at all like onboarding and monetization (I’d say this may explain the price and “no battle passes” more than some conscious noble decision to change the model. Also how bad the earned cosmetics were).
• Ongoing cost to maintain game would be additional millions a month.
• Concord is the biggest budget game Sony has ever released, the biggest loss they’ve ever taken. There are other games being worked on at Sony that cost more than this, but in terms of what’s already out, this is the largest. It’s a total loss.

Why did it happen:

• Concord was said to be “the future of PlayStation,” they said it was a “Star Wars-like project.” There were big multimedia plans between the cinematics and inclusion in things like Amazon’s Secret Level.
• There was a culture of “toxic positivity” vibe, where you could not say anything negative internally about the game. Character designs, etc. No one was allowed to “meaningfully change the course of the game.”
• This was (CEO of Sony Interactive) “Herman Hulst’s baby,” who was a massive champion of the game.

Some of this still seems so strange, budget aside, as given AAA bloat these days, I can believe that. But how do you look at a game in a “laughable” state in alpha two years ago, scramble to outsource work to get it finished and still believe it’s “the future of PlayStation” and a potential Star Wars-like property? Star Wars comparisons are always a tall order, we heard that said about the goal of Bungie’s Destiny back in the day. But Destiny…succeeded and has lasted for ten years. Concord lasted two weeks.

I guess this is the “toxic positivity,” which has been confirmed by other sources, where even if that sounds ridiculous, you can’t say that, especially if this was a game cradled by the entire head of Sony Interactive. I’d argue putting this much faith in a game that bad is almost fully disqualifying for that role.

The head of Firewalk has already stepped down, and it seems close to impossible the team survives, either dissolved into other studios or shut down entirely. This is arguably the biggest video game disaster in history by financial loss, and there needs to be someone held responsible. It should not be the rank and file workers in this situation…

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